It was just a matter of time. With police unable to solve a spate of murders-for-hire, they inevitably would be victimized. The waylaying of two patrolmen by eight armed motorcyclists even looked like a B-movie. At daylight on a busy Manila intersection, four pillion riders motioned the cops to alight. Quickly disarmed and made to kneel on the pavement, the two could only watch as four others shot dead two rear passengers of the patrol car. The eight ambushers then sped off in four big bikes. It was all caught on CCTV. Then the flashback: the cops had just taken the two fatalities to inquest for carrying concealed weapons, and were returning to headquarters. Earlier that day on national radio-TV one of the two had confessed to being a hit man, and his companion the middleman. For P20,000 per head, he killed drug pushers who didn’t remit earnings to a syndicate whose head he never met.
The eight attackers must have been sent by the gang boss to silence the snitches – or were vigilantes out to rid the streets of dregs of society. Whichever, they’ve worsened the crime wave. It wasn’t the first time that motorcycled gunmen struck in pairs or in squads in Manila. Past victims not only were puny pushers but also rogue cops.
Detective Dirty Harry Callahan in the Clint Eastwood starrer “Magnum Force” (1973) was able to bust the vigilante crew in 124 minutes. In painful real life the Philippine National Police has failed to solve half of the 23,327 street killings from July 2016 to June 2018. In that last publicized report by the PNP Directorate for Investigation, all index crimes were down except homicide, which had shot up. One-third was drug-related, that is, gang rivalries, unpaid narco-trades, and vigilante strikes. (Not to be confused with 4,279 resisters in police raids and buy-busts.) The rest sprang from land and family disputes, business fraud and double-cross grudges and love triangles, road rage and insurgency. Metro Manila had the most number of homicides, 4,231, and the least solution rate, 32.43 percent.
Unsolved homicides, especially drug-related, dent the trust in the police. A Social Weather Station poll last Dec., released only this week, shows that 68 percent of Filipinos think cops to be involved in narco-trafficking. Sixty-six percent believe they summarily execute suspects (extrajudicial killings). Fifty-seven percent say the cops even plant evidence.
In the wake of the gangland or vigilante slaying of the two guns-for-hire last Tuesday, reactions were cynical. Texters to radio-TV news wondered if the ambushers were themselves cops or their protectees. The brass rues that the two fatalities’ confessions would have pointed up once and for all who those “riding-in-tandem” killers were. But suspicion of police rubout pervaded. The Manila police chief is contemplating to ban motorcyclists with male pillion riders – just like in adjacent Mandaluyong City since 2014. But what good would that do if cops are un-alert or absent to begin with. It’s the campaign period and the Comelec has imposed a gun ban, except only on uniformed servicemen. Police had been directed to set up checkpoints everywhere anytime. Yet in mid-afternoon the other Sunday in Mandaluyong, two ambushers on a motorbike shot and killed a businessman and his driver along Metro Manila’s busiest EDSA road.
In that murder the police announced the only leads they had to the suspects’ identities: both were wearing black jackets and black helmets. That magnified all the more the police inability to solve homicides. For years the PNP Firearms and Explosives Division had been reporting that more than a million guns are on the loose. As far back as 2003 the PNP Directorate for Operations was being urged to profile the emergent “riding-in-tandem” gunslingers. Nothing had been done then – nothing is being done today it seems.
So expect more cops to encounter and be overpowered by vigilantes.
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It’s the ’70s once more on Mar. 27, 8 p.m., at the SMX Convention Center, SM Aura, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. “Hotdog Minus 1,” a tribute concert for band original Rene Garcia, is led by composer-brother Dennis. Plus one very special guest: Boy Camara.
For red hot tickets, call (0917) 7069986 or (0945) 4864399.
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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).
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